WordPress 3.5 is at 4,301,146 downloads, so percentage wise it's different. Only around 56% of people are using the latest version, and the most ever downloads on a day was under 800. The ~60k downloads is 'all users, all versions, forever' and it's really a benchmark like that.

I understand completely, but regardless of version of WordPress or the plugins version, the total number of downloads is a benchmark of a plugins or features desirability. Its the number of people over the course of the plugins lifetime that have reached out for that functionality from the plugin as it wasnt available from the core.

I'm just debating, I have no need of this functionality any longer, but I still think it would be a useful piece of functionality that more people than you realize might appreciate based on the long term download numbers of the post expirator plug-in.

That said, I dont really have a dog in this fight anymore however. I just set up a record prune job externally to do it for me, but I still think it would make a good inclusion.

I do agree about needless feature creep. You always want to keep your core as tight as possible

I don't have a dog in the fight either :) I'm just trying to look at it objectively. I think this is a needed feature for less than 80% of the WP user base, and that's pretty much my benchmark for if I think we should push it. Mostly I wanted to explain that total downloads is only one measurement for 'into core use case' math.